Hostage to Fortuna

by R. W. Peake

  “I do,” I acknowledged, which seemed to surprise him. “But I did not see any other alternative.”

  “You could have waited until my brother, the King,” he emphasized, “returned tomorrow, then discussed this matter with him.”

  “And,” I asked quietly, “what guarantee do I have that Cogidubnus will be here tomorrow?”

  This made him flush, but he persisted, “Even if he does not return tomorrow, you should have waited. After all,” he spread his hands out, “what more does a day or two matter?”

  “I just explained why,” I countered, and while I did not point at the black-bearded warrior again, I saw he understood my meaning.

  Nothing was said for the span of several heartbeats, then Ivomagus broke the silence. “It is not my decision to make, Centurion. But,” he admitted, reluctantly if I am any judge, “I cannot say that I do not see why you behaved in the manner you did.”

  I made a mistake then, when I pressed, “So you’ll talk to your brother about this? And you’ll tell him that I had no choice?”

  I saw I had erred by the manner in which he stiffened.

  “I said no such thing,” he replied coldly. “I merely stated that I understand why you acted as you did.”

  “We did get a mast,” I pointed out helpfully. “And we’ll start work on repairing the ship and placing the mast at first light.”

  “That,” he answered icily, “will be up to my brother.”

  “You mean that you’re not going to allow us to begin work until he returns?” I gasped. “Why? What possible harm could come from allowing us to start work?”

  “Because,” he replied evenly and without hesitation, “as you pointed out, while we expect my brother tomorrow, he is the King and can come and go as he pleases. If you make your repairs and then leave before he returns, it will be a mortal insult to him, and to the Parisii people. As I said,” he waved a hand around him, “he has instructed me to prepare a feast for that day when you are ready to depart.”

  Listening to him, I realized something; he was not worried about an insult to Cogidubnus; he was concerned that his brother would take out his wrath on Ivomagus in the event that the king did not return before we departed. And, I conceded to myself, it was not an unreasonable concern.

  “Very well,” I finally answered. “We will not make the repairs until Cogidubnus returns. However, may we at least make all the necessary preparations that need to be made before we begin the actual work? Like,” I added, “dismantling the shed next to the dock?”

  He thought a moment, then finally nodded. “That would be acceptable, Centurion. Now,” he stood up and extended a hand towards the door, “I will see that you are escorted back to your camp. I suspect that you need to get your rest.” I did not care for such a summary dismissal, but I held my tongue; I was just about to the door, where the half-dozen men who had escorted me were standing when Ivomagus called my name.

  When I turned around, he asked, “If those Brigantes had attacked you, I assume that you would have fought back?”

  “Of course,” I replied, a bit surprised at what I thought would be obvious.

  “And would you have been victorious?”

  “Of course,” I repeated. Then, I added, “And we wouldn’t have left one of those bastards alive.”

  He did not say anything, but I saw one corner of his mustache lift in what I had learned was his version of a smile.

  A meal was waiting for me, and I consumed it before sending runners to summon the officers of both groups and Acisculus to inform them of the restriction placed on us by Ivomagus. And, as I expected, nobody was happy about it, yet while I was content to allow some complaining, I finally held up a hand to silence them.

  “There’s nothing we can do about it,” I said shortly. My head was aching abominably, and I just wanted to get some sleep, so I went to the more important matters, asking Acisculus, “How much work will it take to finish the crane and take down that shed?”

  “No more than a half-day,” he answered immediately.

  I turned to Motius and Cador, “Once we get the ship out of the water, how long to make the repair to the hull?”

  It was Cador who answered first, saying hesitantly, “That is hard to say, Centurion. Until we can see the damage from the outside and more closely, I cannot give you a definite answer.”

  I looked over to Motius, certain that he would offer something, but to my surprise, he shook his head.

  “Cador is correct, Centurion. What might appear to be a simple case of replacing the planks that have been buckled is not, because we need to examine both sides. There may be several planks that are cracked on the outside that do not appear to be so when we examine them from inside the ship.”

  “Then what is the longest period of time you think it will take, if several planks are cracked like that?” I tried not to sound impatient, but I heard my tone and knew I was unsuccessful.

  They exchanged a glance, and Cador gave Motius a nod, so he was the one who answered, “If the damage in that area is more extensive, then it will take at least three days.”

  This elicited groans from the rest of us, while I thought, I haven’t even asked about the mast yet, so I did that next.

  “You said that we can make preparations. Is that correct, Centurion?” Motius asked in response.

  “Yes,” I answered, but then I paused to think for a moment, and I reluctantly had to add, “although what Ivomagus agreed to was making the preparations by finishing the crane and disassembling the shed. I suppose that preparing the mast would technically be working on the ship. At least,” I shook my head in frustration, “that might be how Ivomagus sees it.” Nothing was said by the others, but I made my decision. “Fuck that. Do what you need to do to prepare the mast tomorrow since you won’t be able to do anything else. If Ivomagus has a problem with it,” I shrugged as if it was little matter, “he’ll tell me.”

  I dismissed Cador, Motius, and Acisculus, and as soon as they were gone, I asked Saloninus and Mus, in his role as Optio, to give their report about what happened when they sailed downriver.

  “At first,” Saloninus began, “I didn’t think there were any of those bastards watching us, because when we reached that spot where that dock is, we hadn’t seen anyone, not even someone fishing from the riverbank. But,” he chuckled, “that didn’t last long.”

  He paused, and I realized that he was giving Mus the opportunity to pick up the story, although my old Tesseraurius was clearly oblivious to that fact, so I cleared my throat and asked, “What did you see, Mus?”

  He started on his stool, clearly surprised, but he recovered quickly enough.

  “We hadn’t even dropped anchor when a bunch of mounted savages came galloping up to the dock,” he began. I was about to ask him about numbers when he beat me to it, although he glanced at Saloninus as he continued, “I counted a bit more than fifty men on horseback. Is that what you got, Saloninus?” When Saloninus nodded, Mus went on, “But they didn’t do anything much. They just sat there watching us. Oh,” he waved a hand, “they were shouting things, but since none of us could understand them, that helped keep the boys calm enough.” I got an instant warning when his expression changed slightly. “But then the rest of them showed up, and that’s when things got…interesting.”

  “The rest of them?” I did not understand, and Mus looked to Saloninus.

  “Their infantry, Pullus,” he answered. “And they were all armed, although I saw mostly spears. Would you agree, Mus?” He nodded, but Saloninus was not through. “But they also had a fair number of archers.”

  “Fair number?” I frowned, not liking this imprecision. “What’s a fair number?”

  “At least a hundred,” Saloninus responded, and I suppose I noticed that he began looking at the ground.

  “A hundred?” I repeated, and this was where I began getting a bad feeling. “That’s more than a fair number of archers for a town of the size they told us it was. How many men altogether? D
id you get any kind of count?”

  I got a warning by the way that Saloninus glanced up at Mus before he answered, “We stopped counting at a thousand.”

  “A thousand?” I gasped. “But Ivomagus told us that that town was a bit smaller than Petuar, so how could there be more than a thousand warriors in that town?” Then the implication hit me, and I sat upright, my head suddenly throbbing even more. “Unless,” I spoke slowly as I thought things through, “they’re not from that town. Which means that their king, or maybe some powerful lord, summoned as many warriors as he could find.”

  “The Parisii only have about five hundred men in and around Petuar,” Alex pointed out.

  “Maybe,” Saloninus offered, “this doesn’t have as much to do with us as we thought. We’ve only been here going on three days now, and I have to think that it would take longer than that for that many men to assemble. Unless,” he allowed, but he sounded skeptical, “whoever it is has the power sent messengers out the instant he saw us reach the river.”

  I shook my head.

  “No,” I said flatly, “they were already here. They must have something planned.” I thought of something. “Did you wait long enough for the Parisii to get to you before you came back upriver?”

  “Yes,” Saloninus answered, but I saw something flash across his face.

  However, it was Mus who spoke up next, beginning with a groan, then said, “That is why those bastards vanished. They saw the Parisii coming and didn’t want to be spotted.”

  “What are you saying? That they came up to the riverbank, then turned around and left?”

  “That’s exactly what we’re saying,” Saloninus confirmed. Then he added ruefully, “And here we thought it was because once they got a good look at us, they wanted nothing to do with us and turned tail and ran away.”

  We lapsed into a silence, then Alex asked, “Are you going to tell them, Pilus Prior? Are you going to let Ivomagus and Cogidubnus know the Brigantes appear to be planning on something?”

  It was the question that I was struggling with, but all I could do was answer honestly, “I don’t know. I think,” I sighed, “a lot depends on how Cogidubnus reacts to what we did today.”

  As Acisculus predicted, it took less than half a day for the frame of the crane to be erected, but the forging of the cog and ratchet that makes the crane work turned out to be as problematic as the Immune had worried about, though not for the reason I had thought.

  “It’s not actually the smith or the quality of the iron ore,” he explained. “He just can’t get his forge as hot as we’re used to, so the pieces aren’t as tempered as they should be.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked him.

  His face turned grim. “It means that the iron might be too brittle, and it could crack under the strain of such a heavy load.”

  He did not need to go into detail; I could easily imagine the catastrophe that would occur if a trireme that was several feet off the ground came crashing down.

  I felt foolish for doing so, but I still brought up. “I suppose it’s impossible to make the pieces out of wood?”

  To my surprise, Acisculus did not snort or give any indication that this was a ludicrous idea, although he answered, “If this wasn’t being used to lift a ship, I would say yes, we could carve one as long as we had hard enough wood. But,” he shook his head, “not with something this heavy.”

  “So we have to gamble that it will hold up,” I said, and he nodded.

  It was not all bad news; under Motius’ supervision, four of my men were busy stripping the bark from the tree, and it is probably easy to imagine our collective relief when both Cador and Motius examined it and immediately pronounced it suitable.

  “It is a bit smaller than the old mast,” Motius told me, “but we can use wedges to fill the space.”

  Most importantly, Ivomagus made no attempt to stop us; in fact, he did not even glance at the men at work as he came to inspect our activities. He was not unfriendly, but neither did he stop to talk as he had the days before. The men who were not involved in the work were confined to the camp, which was not popular, but I did not care. Frankly, I was having a hard time keeping my attention on the work as I paced up and down the dock, pretending to watch them while I was really keeping an eye on the street that led out of Petuar, watching for the return of the Parisii king and whatever trouble came with him. The townspeople seemed to have mostly adjusted to our presence, going about their daily business with only a sidelong glance thrown our way. There was the equivalent of a forum, although it was unpaved and never seemed to dry out completely, but like in a Roman town, this open area served as the marketplace, and I noticed that for the first time, some of the females were paying us more attention. They were not being openly flirtatious, of course, but there was a boldness in some of them when our eyes met that was not something one finds with Roman women. Not lost on me was that the boldest were also the most attractive, and there was one woman in particular who I found my eye kept returning to. I say she was a woman; she looked to be about seventeen or eighteen, but she had hair the color of highly burnished copper, with full lips that were perfectly formed, although I did not get close enough to her to see what color her eyes were. She was wearing a gown that was gathered at the waist that was a rich, deep green in color, and I guessed that her eyes might be green as well, knowing that women with striking eyes like to enhance it by matching their attire. And, I confess, it did help pass the time as we pretended not to notice each other.

  Acisculus had been true to his word; the work was completed just before noon, with the shed now nothing more than a pile of neatly stacked lumber, the crane standing more than fifteen feet tall and the large round wooden drum that served as the method to raise and lower heavy items was a bit less than half as large. We had two of these devices at the shipyard the 21st built in Ubiorum, and I confess that I was like many of the other men who, under the guise of some other imaginary task, wandered over to watch how this machine worked. Frankly, I only have a basic understanding of it, but I do know that the wider the drum, the heavier the item can be lifted, and one of those at Ubiorum had a drum so large that it was operated by two men inside it stepping on the horizontal supports that attach the two outer circular pieces instead of one. The drum Acisculus and his men built was not that large; to my eye, the drum was about half the size of the one I just mentioned. All that was being done at this point was being performed by Cador, Motius, and the other members of the crew as they used pieces of rough stone to scrub the wood of the new mast now that the bark had been stripped off. At first, I thought this was just for cosmetic purposes, but Motius assured me that not only did it have a practical effect, it was crucially important.

  “First, we have to smooth down the places where the branches of the tree were cut off so that they are flush, because if any of them protrude, the ring that is attached to the crosspiece can snag on it,” he explained, and while I do not know much about ships, I knew enough to appreciate that he was using simple terms to describe the pieces, because mariners have odd names for every piece of a ship. He continued, “Once that is done, we sand the entire mast down before we apply a coating to the mast so that it does not absorb water. But,” he shook his head, “we do not have any of it with us, and I asked Ivomagus if they might have something like it, but he said they do not.”

  “Is that going to be a problem?”

  “Not for crossing the channel,” he assured me. “But we will have to put in at Lugdunum Batavorum anyway, so that you can send a dispatch to your Legion to let them know you are safe, will you not?” I nodded. “Then we can take care of that there before we finish the journey.”

  As strange as it may seem, this was really the first time any of us discussed what would come after we effected the repairs and resumed our voyage. I suppose it was because we did not want to inadvertently curse ourselves since we Romans are a superstitious lot, and I had been informed that men had been clamoring to be allowed to purcha
se small animals from the Parisii so that they could make sacrifices to the appropriate gods. In fact, Saloninus had approached me earlier in the day with what might seem to be an odd request.

  “Some of the boys,” he began after clearing his throat, which I had learned was a habit of his when he was about to broach something potentially sensitive, “have asked me to ask you if you will speak to Ivomagus about something, Pullus.”

  “‘Some of the boys’?” I asked in an admittedly teasing tone, certain that this was coming from my Pilus Posterior, but I did not press the matter. “And what do some of the boys want me to ask Ivomagus?”

  “They want to know the names of whatever sea gods the Parisii worship,” he answered, completely serious. “That way, they can sacrifice to them as well as Neptune.” My first impulse was to have some fun at his expense, but I saw that he was sincere, so I simply assured him that I would ask, but he was not done. “And I’d like your permission to buy some animals so that we can make sacrifices before we get back on the ship.”

  My initial impulse was to say no, but again, I could see he was serious, and when I gave it a moment’s thought, I could see no harm in asking, so I told him that I would. It was perhaps two parts of a watch past noon when Motius informed me that the mast was now prepared and ready, and we had done everything we could do that day. They were not obvious about it, but Ivomagus had clearly sent men to keep an eye on us, which I assumed was because he did not trust us to not begin work, but once the seamen were done, there was no reason for me to stay there on the dock. Acisculus and his working party had returned to camp, and it was not yet time to change the guard shift on the ship, but I could not bring myself to return to the camp to wait for Cogidubnus there. So I decided to wander over to where the two dozen or so merchants had their various wares arrayed, many of them simply spread out on a blanket on the ground, although there were several what I suppose could be called stalls. One thing I had noticed was that these Parisii are seemingly indifferent to anything other than sheer utility when it came to woodcraft. Nothing appears to be sanded, and in truth, it looks as if things are hastily thrown together, like the stalls, which appeared to my eye to be in danger of collapse. However, the same cannot be said for their metalwork, particularly their jewelry, and my eye was caught by a necklace, upon which was suspended a pendant with an incision of a bird that was surprisingly lifelike.